Palo Alto Measure E

a photo I took at Bixby Park



It's the morning after Election Day and I'm thinking of Emily Renzel, the loser in a bitterly fought, divisive community battle pitting passionate environmentalists against each other. Emily, a septuagenarian, who has a local park named after her, is as passionate now as when she served as a city council member. She fought to save 10 acres of land that was supposed to be transformed from our landfill area into the adjoining Bixby park - near the bay. Peter Drekmeier, an equally passionate environmentalist and former mayor, (and good friend of mine) led the campaign to rezone the land for the construction of a composting and renewable energy facility. They are two leaders wearing 10 gallon white hats in my eyes - brought into an unlikely battle in large part because our community is so built out. Virtually any development from a homeless shelter to a childcare facility face huge opposition here (on top of "NIMBY-ism). Some years back, the Media Center where I work was stopped from putting a digital arts facility next to a high school - even though the district had agreed to let it take the place of some temporary portable buildings. But the vocal opposition prevailed because that land was supposed to one day become part of the school's playing fields area. This time the development won out over the promise of open land.

I think for many of us who voted for it, it was because global warming has become a game-changer. Global warming has generated an urgent call to action, even for unproven ventures such as one of the possible composter technologies to be considered for the new development.

My job is to produce the videotaped debates that we have before every election. I spent an afternoon with Emily and an afternoon with Peter, editing the visuals into their respective debate statements. I didn't want either one to lose. I didn't want either one to feel the way they did about the "other." They are both heroes who answer the call "think global, act local." Emily wears her heart on her sleeve and these ten acres were virtually sewn into her big, exposed heart. This was one vote I did not look forward to making.

Profits and Loss.... Earthstory

Did Nero actually fiddle while Rome burned? Could people actually continue to stoke our "modern" economies and lifestyles until all the glaciers and forests and coral reefs are gone? Until cities disappear under water and societies wither from famine? There's an episode (12/5/03 - "Middle of Nowhere") from This American Life, my favorite radio show, that left a huge impression on me. It's about a South Pacific island, Nauru, whose 12,000 or so people were surrounded by trees, many that bore fruit. In the late 1800's an Australian man brought back a piece of what looked like petrified wood from the island and used it as a doorstop. Another man at his work discovered that it was actually a rich phosphate and Nauru became very conspicuous on the world map. One colonizing country after another came to mine the phosphate during the 20th century. When colonialism went out of style and gave way to globalization the citizens of an independent Nahru continued to sell off their valuable phosphate rich parcels until the tiny island was almost completely denuded of topsoil and trees. For awhile, in the late 80's, the "Nauruinians" were the richest people per capita on the entire planet. By the late 90's, except for some trees on the perimeter, the entire surface of the Manhattan-sized island is all dusty gray-white coral. All food and even drinking water must be flown in.

(The story gets into the crazy and barely legal ways Nauru has schemed to raise money without any natural resources to sell.)

To me, this little island is a total metaphor for the larger group of us inhabiting Planet Earth, which is just a bigger, more spherical island. Have we reached the equivalent of the late 80's in Nauru?